The Killing of the Saints

by Alex Abella

  He sighed. "Guess I'm going to have to kill you. I don't particularly like to, chico, but you know, business is business."

  I put my hands behind my back and began feeling for something on the buffet 1 could grab hold of.

  "Why didn't you have your Crips really do the job? Why do it now?"

  "So you found out about that? These American niggers, they don't know shit. All I told them was to get you into an accident, not to get you killed. You know, in case something went wrong and I lost, I had something I could appeal on, you know, delay in the case and all that. Goes to show you, you want something right, you have to do it yourself."

  "So now you're going to kill me, after all I did for you?"

  "You didn't do it just for me. You had your own agenda. I was your tool, just like you were mine. We wanted two different things. I wanted freedom, you wanted absolution. We both got it."

  My fingers wrapped themselves around a bottle neck. "How did you find out about my dad?"

  "I had you checked out. I have friends who can hire detectives too, you know. Real P.I.'s, not make believe like you."

  A beam of light shot into the dining room, the golden ray falling on Enzo's bloodied head.

  "Lucinda!" shouted Ramón. She came running back, buttoning her dress.

  "Am I OK like this?"

  Ramón diverted his eyes for a moment and I threw the bottle at him. He fired but I threw myself to the floor, picked up the machete and slashed at his hand. I hit with the flat of the blade, not cutting him but knocking the gun out of his hand. I jumped on him when he leapt for the gun and covered him the moment his fingers closed around the revolver. I kneed him in the kidneys, but he wouldn't release the gun so we both rolled on the ground, bumping against the legs of the table, against the wall, against Enzo's body.

  "Hit him! hit him!" he ordered Lucinda, who grabbed the bottle and hovered close, waiting to strike. She came down and struck me on my back so I twisted Ramón around, pinning him against Enzo, rolling in the sloshing blood, feeling surges of strength I never imagined I had. The gun went off.

  "Hit him again!" he ordered. The blow landed on Ramón's shoulder, causing the gun to fire again. The bullet entered her neck. She gasped, then vomited blood, falling. I finally rammed Ramón against the window casement, forcing him to surrender the gun. I got to my feet and kicked him in the groin. He doubled over.

  "Don't you fucking move!" I screamed as I went to look at Lucinda. She lay flat on her back, eyes open in shock, blood surging out of the hole where her larynx had been. Ramón sat, panting, leaning against the wall.

  "Forget her, she's dead," he said, almost out of breath. "It's just you and me, like it always was."

  "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Don't move!"

  "Sure you do. It was always you and me, that's what it always was. She was just a bridge, like the trial, like everything else." He stopped, took a deep breath. "Think about it. You could be my lawyer again. You can defend me. You can say this was just a crime of passion, she was fucking Enzo so I lost it and shot them both. You can get me off, I know you can. You'll be the most famous lawyer in the whole country-you'll save the same man twice from the gas chamber. You can do it."

  I held the gun on my left, still pointing at Ramón. With my right I grabbed the machete and opened Lucinda's throat, so she wouldn't choke on her own blood.

  "Forget her, Charlie, forget her!"

  "Don't you fucking move!"

  I bent over Lucinda and at that moment Ramón surged forward, plunging through the window in a shower of glass and wood splinters. I fired but missed. The gun was empty. I tossed it away and tried to revive Lucinda but it was too late-her eyes clouded over, her heart stopped. I stood up and roared like a wounded beast and also raced out the window.

  I could see Ramón running up the street, up the hill toward the observatory. In the distance I heard the wailing of a siren and saw the three-color light bars of the patrol cars careening up to the house.

  I took off, running after him, up the steep incline, past the red tiled houses and the vast estates, into the steps leading up the hill. I could see him at the top, making his way into the park. I bounded up the steps, three, four at a time, the hunter after the quarry, the spirit after the flesh.

  When I reached the top of the steps my lungs were on fire and my legs about to break into jagged pieces. Then I saw Ramón scurrying into the bushes, up the trail to the top of Mount Hollywood. I took off after him, jumping over the barbed wire fence, tearing my pants, feeling the barbs sinking into my flesh but shutting out the pain, determined never to lose him again, never to fail again. The trail ended in a clump of thorn bushes. I saw Ramón up ahead, on all fours, clambering up the hill under the branches. I threw myself down and ran on all fours up the storm channel by the bushes, the thorns ripping my shirt off my back, rocks and broken bottles in the channel gashing my hands and knees.

  I saw him again once I reached the top, veering to the left, toward the clearing. I knew I had him-there was no way out of the spot except down the path I was on. When I reached the clearing he was staring at the city below, teetering on the rim, a thousand-foot drop to the houses below. He turned to me, his face a mask of primal anger, the mask of the ancient god. He held a broken bottle in his hand.

  "I am Oggún niká!," he said, slashing the bottle in front of him. "I am Oggún, the master of war! Come meet your fate!"

  He rushed me, the bottle headed straight for my face. I waited until the last possible moment then stepped to the side, grabbing his lead arm between my two forearms, snapping the bone in two. But he seemed not to feel the pain and grabbed me with his left hand and somehow whipped himself around and lifted me off the ground with just one hand, taking me to the edge of the clearing. He cast me down, but I grabbed hold of a chaparral bush and pulled myself up. He jumped on my hands, then kicked me in the face. I swung around, threw a kick. But he took the blow to his body as though it were just a child's touch. I pounced on him and pummeled him time and again, but it was like the nightmare where you strike your enemy with all your might and the blows land as though deadened by a pillow. He butted me in the stomach with his head, throwing me to the ground, then grabbed my arm and was about to toss me down the gully, down the thousand-foot drop to my death, when something or someone pushed him instead.

  He fell on the ground then trembled with fear at whatever was behind me. I kicked him in the chest and saw him fly down, down, down, down to the rocks below, where he struck and opened up like a doll.

  Panting, I got up, then felt a chill course down my back, the chill of love and recognition. Standing there, smiling, was the image of my father. Not Tom Elliot's impersonation but my real father, just as I knew him when I was a boy, young, strong and full of hope, wearing a white linen suit.

  "Bien hecho, mi hijo," he said. Well done. As I approached him he walked backward to the edge of the clearing, then past it so that he stood floating in the air, his body becoming transparent. The sun came out and dawn vanished and so did he.

  "Estás perdonado," he said. You are forgiven. Then he was gone and the sun surged up in a blazing ball of light and the City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, shifted under her covers and sat up to greet the new day.

  On my way home, before the police, before the media, before the questions and the answers, I stopped at a phone booth and placed a call to Miami.

  "Hello, Julian? Hi, it's your dad. I'm coming home. I love you, son. "